Lucio Ruiz-Poveda (1931-2025), known artistically as “Luziano”, was a self-taught painter of Basque origin with a singular career, whose work was characterized by a strong visceral, material and coloristic component. Born in Elgoibar (Gipuzkoa) in 1931 and died on 9 March 2025. Throughout his long life, he combined the permanent search for new forms of expression with an independent temperament that led him to manage his career outside of conventionalisms and official circuits. His artistic production, which ranges from landscapes to portraits and abstract painting, reflects the richness of his personal experiences and his travels through Europe, Asia and America.
Origin and early years
He was born in Elgoibar (Guipúzcoa) in 1931. His father, a shoemaker from La Mancha, and his mother, of Galician origin, had to face the difficulties of the Spanish Civil War. When Lucio was still a child, they embarked on the ship Habana to France, where he lived with a Parisian family that marked him deeply: he learned French and, temporarily, forgot Spanish. Upon his return, he found his father imprisoned and a hard-working mother who raised seven children.
From a very young age he ed an inclination for drawing and painting. He took drawing classes at the school of arts and crafts in Elgoibar, and as a teenager he was already doing portraits during village festivals. In addition, he acquired a fluent command of the Basque language during his stays in the region's hamlets.
Initial artistic training and career
Although he did not receive formal academic training and considered himself self-taught, he had the opportunity to work in Madrid painting movie posters for the Gran Vía movie theaters, even making, as he recalled, the poster for Mogambo. However, he left this job in search of greater creative freedom, beginning to paint portraits in nightclubs and to exhibit his work in a more personal way.
Later, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with artists from Montmartre, established relationships that encouraged him to exhibit and, above all, forged the anarchic and unclassifiable character of his painting. He always maintained an independent vision, distancing himself from the commercial circuits and traditional galleries, which led him to open his own exhibition halls both in Spain and abroad.
Style and pictorial evolution
Critics have defined his painting as “visceral, temperamental, impetuous and telluric”. Self-taught and unattached to established artistic movements, Luziano's work moves landscape painting, portraiture and abstraction:
- Landscapes and portraits: His first steps focused on the representation of everyday scenes, villages with a strong personality, facades in ruins that evoke the nostalgia of the past, as well as portraits made both in Spain and in his travels abroad (Morocco, Italy, India, Nepal, Turkey, Iran, etc.).
- Search for roots and cultural influences: Throughout his life, the painter traveled in search of unique human types and places. His works the imprint of the multiculturalism and spirituality he experienced, so that he embraces varied realities, always with a brushstroke loaded with matter and contrast.
- Final abstract stage: In his last years, he developed a freer and more abstract painting, focused on experimentation with textures, dense impasto and plastic resources far from the orthodox. This phase culminated with the exhibition at the Casa de Cultura in Elgoibar in 2024, where he ed his most avant-garde and colorful side.
Recurring themes
- Marginality and the figure of the homeless: Several of his paintings reflect a deep interest in destitution as a symbol of rootlessness, but also of the great humanity that the artist perceived in those who live on the margins of society.
- The passage of time: Façades and buildings in decay, ruins that convey a longing for the lost, coupled with the desire to capture ephemeral moments and capture them on canvas.
- Spirituality and introspection: The mysticism evident in his work is linked both to romantic pantheism and the need to reflect on nature and the origin of the world.
Legacy and last stages
For many years, he combined stays in Madrid and Zarauz, places where he had his main art galleries. After health problems, he closed the Zarauz gallery in 2018, but kept open the one in Madrid, on Claudio Coello street.
His work is in prominent museums and institutions, such as the Plandhale Plains Museum (Texas), the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the City Council of Elgoibar, the Kutxa, Caja Rural and various private collections in Spain, France, the United States, India and Japan, among other countries.
In his last years (he reached the age of 93), he continued to explore abstract painting with increasingly dense impasto and vivid colour, an unmistakable sign of his inexhaustible creative impetus. He died shortly after the 2024 exhibition, leaving behind a vast and highly personal artistic legacy that illustrates not only his own particular evolution, but also part of the Spanish cultural history of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
His own galleries and exhibitions
- In Madrid, he opened galleries in the Castellana Hilton and Meliá Princesa hotels (1962-1973).
- He opened temporary exhibition rooms in Motrico (1969-1970) and in Zarauz (from 1971), where he developed an intense artistic activity.
- He also founded the gallery in Calle Claudio Coello in Madrid (1976), which has remained open uninterruptedly for decades.
With regard to his exhibition career, although his main activity revolved around his own galleries, he participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Spain (San Sebastian, Zaragoza, Toledo, etc.) and abroad (Paris, United States and Mexico, among others). Some of his outstanding exhibitions include:
- Alcón Gallery (Madrid, 1964).
- Lepic Gallery (Paris, 1965).
- Emile Walter Gallery (New York, 1966).
- Panhadle Plains Museum (Amarillo, Texas, 1970).
- Casa de Cultura de Elgoibar (exhibitions in 1968, 1992, 1999, 2003 and a last one in 2024).
His 1988 Army Painting Prize with the work Viva la quinta del 89 was also a milestone in the few competitions he entered.
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